Dear Organlearners,
Leo Minnigh <L.D.Minnigh@library.tudelft.nl> writes:
> But now turning to the role of godparents in the lowlands. A quick look in
> some dictionaries and other works and catalogues (lots of references to
> Mario Puzo, godfathers and maffia (!)), I was not able to find some
> reference outside the world of the church. All of the hints point to the
> baptise ceremony of the young child. But At, I try to search further.
Liewe Leo,
(Just for the information of readers. We are investigating the
problem of diminishing effective contact between parents and their
children as the children gets older. I suggested to Leo, taking a
hint from the culture of our Banthu peoples, to look in the direction
of godparents for a solution.)
I had very much the same results. But we must not be discouraged by
these negative results. In fact, Einstein's Relativity Theory came as
a result of negative results in the famous Michelson-Morely
experiment. They wanted to prove that the velocity of light change
when the velocity of an observer changes. They found that the
velocity of light is independant of the velocity of the observer.
The more I dig into this godparent topic, the more a startling
pattern develops for me. Let me explain it.
None of the Banthu peoples (more than 1500 langauges) of Southern
Africa did ever self developed a writing system. All communication
and all preservation of knowledge were accompolished by way of mouth.
The Banthu peoples in South Africa had a very "rich parent system"
before colonisation times. First, a child had its "natural parents"
-- a father and a mother. But a child also had "large parents" -- two
grandfathers and two grandmothers. Furthermore, a child also had
"little parents" -- all the uncles and all the aunts of both the
father and the mother. (Leo, I discovered that the "peet" of the
Afrikaans "peetouer" for godparent comes from the French "petit" for
little via the Hugenots -- a translation for the Banthu "little
parent".)
Thus each child grew up with many parents, i.e many "familiar
speaking books of life". Each of these many parents had a specific
role to play in the upbringing of the Banthu child druring the
various stages of development until adulthood. Did it work? Yes.
Delinquency among children was unknown. Misfits among adults was so
rare that they did not even needed prisons for them.
But as a result of colonisation, they were also introduced to
literacy. Children were originally introduced to one "written book
of life" -- the Bible. Sadky, it was sometimes a confrontation rather
than an introduction. The missionaries played an immense role in
supplying these peoples with written versions of their languages.
They also introduced them to written European languages such as
English, French, German, Dutch and Portuguese. Eventually children
were confronted with many "written books on TOPICS of life by
experts".
Obviously, children compared these "written books on topics of life
by experts" with what their "familiar speaking books of life" had to
say on these topics. Guess what? The "familiar speaking books of
life" soon fell into disfavour. Familiarity breeds contempt. Literacy
began to replace the "rich parent system". Industrialisation and
urbanisation accelerated this process. That is why I stressed one
word in "see what richness there was 500 years and MORE ago" (in
the lowlands region). You will have to go back before the invention
of printing by Guthenberg.
I can give you a historical account how the system of "schools,
teachers and books" the system of "familiar speaking books
of life" in Europe and in Africa. Some of you can do that even better
than me. But what I want to come to, is the PRESENT. We are in the
centre of an information and technological explosion, wrapped up in
globalisation. The "written books on topics of life by experts" have
become so complex in number and depth of topics that the systems of
"schools, teachers and books" cannot operate anymore like the old
system of "familiar speaking books of life".
In fact, we are now desparately in need of a "rich parent system". It
cannot be based apparently on physical kinship as in ancient times
because families (parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts) do not
live close together any more. I wrote "apparently" in the previous
sentence because the physical kinship and the culture involved
actually provided for certain requirements. It is these spiritual
requirements rather than the physical kinship which made it possible
for the "rich parent system" to operate as a system of "familiar
speaking books of life"
It is our task to discover these requirements and design one or more
kinds of organisations of parents and concerned adults who together
can take care of the upbringing of children like the "rich parent
system" of the Banthu peoples before colonisation times. What name
will we give to these organisations? Unfortunately, the name Learning
Organisation has been taken for use in a more general sense. So let
us then call an such an organisation a Parental Learning
Organisation, or Parental LO for short, or PLO as acronym.
> But maybe we can open the subject to a nearby direction: the role of
> guilds in medieval times. The structure: master (meester) -
> craftsman/journeyman (I don't know the proper translation of the Dutch
> word 'gezel') - pupil (leerling). Guilds go back to the 5th century. In
> medieval times they became diverse: guilds in merchandise, trade, art and
> militaries. In Holland these old LO's were the birthplace of our so-called
> 'golden age' (17th century) with world-wide activities, world-famous
> painters and so on.
Leo, while hunting for something like you, I also came across guilds
a number of times. Although I read each carefully, I discarded them
because in most cases a member had to pay a monthly sum to belong to
the guild. In fact, the name guild derive from the Germanic word for
many which is in my mother tongue Afrikaans "geld". A child never has
to pay his/her parents a montly fee to act as parents. They act as
parents because they LOVE the child. Money cannot buy love. This give
us the founding principle of PLOs - they will have to act because of
LOVE and nothing else.
Leo, maybe I should have thought more about them as you have done.
You have recognised them as the exemplification of LOs during the
Middle Ages. What wonderful insight! What a magnificant example of
the esentiality - "connect-beget" (fruitfulness). Thank you very much
for opening my eyes.
You have probably also read that these guilds were actively
discouraged by the protestant churches during the Reformation just as
the Catholic church tried to discourage them almost a thousand
years previously when it became the Holy Empire. In both cases
paganism was offered as reason. But to me it was rather a conflict of
interests. Unfortunately, the guilds lost much of their attraction
after the Reformation, except for the craft guilds. It is about them
as the remaining ones we have the most information, as you also have
noted.
These craft guilds were related to crafts such as bakery, butchery,
masonry and druggery. They consisted of a qualified craftsman
(subjectmaster or "vakmeester" in Afrikaans) and a number of
apprentices (subjectlearners or "vakleerders" in Afrikaans) who
worked for the craftsman under his guidance. These learners "paid"
the master in terms of their work done for him. It reminds me of post
graduate students working for promoters at universities. By asking
you to dig up information on godparents, I have very much done the
same. Some things do not change much, do they?
Maybe we should strive to become and recognise masters for the
seven essentialities - seven masters who can work as a team. You
might just be a very good candidate for fruitfulness. By the way,
Arthur Koestler with his book "The Act of Creation" have shown
himself to be a great master of this essentiality. Do read the book.
Similarly, first Jan Smuts and then David Bohm have shown them to be
great masters of the essentiality wholeness.
> I hope to find the time to study more on this subject (but shall not
> forget the possible role of godparents in family-life).
We sure will wait eagerly upon your results so as to learn more about
LOs from these medieval guilds. I like your speculation that they as
LOs helped people to emerge from the Middle Age. Many of us speculate
that LOs will again help us to emerge from the Modern Age into a
"new age" which, I think, we may safely begin to call the Global
Age.
Leo, if you can show that these guilds operated according to the
five disciplines for an LO described by Peter Senge, then your
speculation becomes a fact! Then our present speculations about the
role of LOs in carving out the future may not be so wild as many
would believe.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
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